Group of Three Girls on Street

Helen Levitt

  • Titles Group of Three Girls on Street (Descriptive)
  • Artist Helen Levitt, American, 1913 - 2009
  • Medium gelatin silver print
  • Dimensions image: 3 3/8 × 2 11/16 in. (8.6 × 6.9 cm) sheet: 3 5/8 × 2 1/8 in. (9.1 × 5.4 cm)
  • Credit Line Collection of the Art Fund, Inc. at the Birmingham Museum of Art; The John Hagefstration Collection, AFI.122.2022
  • Work Type photograph
  • Classification Photographs

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A trompe-l'œil (French, “trick the eye”) still life painting consisting of a stretched canvas, painted around all four sides to resemble a rectangular piece of wood cut from a longer plank. The top and bottom edges have a series of lines painted with a thick impasto to resemble the radial grain of a cut board. At the center of the composition is a dark hollow recess covered with a broken pane of glass held in place by nine tack nails, which contains 14 peanuts, functioning as a makeshift peanut dispenser. Tucked behind the pane of glass at the top of the recess is a white paper card which reads “Try One. / S. NIKTA.” “S. NIKTA” is “Atkins” spelled backwards, probably the name of a friend or patron of the artist.
Landscape Detail, Lucille Douglass, charcoal
Bust-length portrait of man in white periwig facing right, wearing British naval officer's uniform
Subject is a lidded container